An Introduction to Applied Linguistics

3.5 Correctness and the applied linguist
The triviality of the U/NonU debate obscures the more serious issue of the im -
portance of norms (Bartsch 1988). We may find prescription and moralising about
language use distasteful but what the astonishing commercial success of a guide to
‘correct’ punctuation such as Truss (2003) indicates is that because language changes,
users need guidance on how to speak and above all write in their own daily usage.
Again, we may baulk at the arrogance of self-appointed moralists, such as those who
funded the Society for Pure English in 1913 under the chairmanship of the poet
Robert Bridges. Its prospectus proposed:
that a few men of letters, supported by the scientific alliance of the best linguistic
authorities, should form a group or free association, and agree upon a modest and
practical scheme for informing popular taste on sound principles, for guiding
educational authorities, and for introducing into practice certain slight modifi -
cations and advantageous changes.
(Smith 1919: 6)
And yet what such initiatives also show is that the language is very much alive: the
anxiety about what is correct is evidence of that. It does not really matter whether the
moralisers’ advice is taken or not: what does matter is that the language as it changes
contains choices. Without such choices, a language is in decline. In his account
of the correctness issue, Crystal gives the very sensible advice: ‘If you go around
thinking that English usage doesn’t matter at all – that “anything goes” – you’ll
quickly get into trouble. Likewise, if you go around thinking that the whole of
English is a minefield – that “nothing goes”. The reality is in between’ (Crystal 1984:
117).
The correctness issue presents itself as a language problem to the applied linguist
in two ways. First, as an issue which, as we have seen, is constantly drawn to the
attention of students in particular and of the public more generally. The applied
linguist has a professional responsibility to take a serious interest in all aspects of the
issue, including public concern. Second, the applied linguist, in person or in writing,
is properly called on for guidance about the choices of usage students, and indeed all
of us, must make. Is the response again to be that these decisions are unimportant
because the matter seems so often apparently trivial?
The theoretical linguist’s view is that these are not linguistic questions but either
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unimportant ‘performance’ errors or social ones and in both cases outside their
concern. But for the applied linguist they are very much questions that belong within
applied linguistics and to them the applied linguist has three responses.
The first is theoretical and has to do with what people’s concern for correctness
means, and the answer of the applied linguist is, somewhat unexpectedly, that it
represents just how systematic is speakers’ use of a language. It invites the applied
linguist to: ‘address the major question: why does language exhibit such a great
degree of regularity?’ (Taylor 1990). Such a view necessarily widens the more
restricted linguistic concept of language, suggesting ways in which applied linguistics
may support and improve the somewhat impoverished abstraction of language which
today acts as the focus of linguistic attention.
The second response follows on from the first in that it recognises that for the
applied linguist these pre- and pro-scriptive views are themselves all part of the
correctness problem and that to dismiss them as irrelevant or uninformed or indeed
trivial is to turn away from the real use of language to the laboratory. The applied
linguist may be sceptical about the stern calls for a non-discriminatory language
use, on the grounds that language engineering is often ineffectual, but he/she
does recognise that the motivation to ameliorate the wrongs of society is genuine
and is part of the current politico-linguistic context. Discriminatory and non-
discriminatory choices need to be presented by the applied linguist as options avail -
able to language users and attention drawn to the implications of one or other choice.
Third, the applied linguist must be more than objectively critical (and sceptical)
in the sense of making informed assessments of the correctness issue. As a teacher and
trainer of teachers he/she must also take sides and legislate for students and others as
to which language choices are at this point in time more or less standard. In doing so
he/she may be wrong, of course, but that is to recognise that even the informed are
themselves caught up in time’s linguistic turn.
What is significant about my choice of these three factors is the acceptance by
applied linguists of the need to act as a bridge between their language expertise and
the skills and knowledge in the specialist area in which resides the language problem
they are addressing.